Ice rubble behaviour and strength: Part I. Review of testing and interpretation of results

The deformation behaviour and strength of ice rubble are addressed in this paper. Review of ice rubble testing and strength is given. Pure shear and punch tests on ice rubble are considered with special attention to derivation of material properties. The primary failure mode associated with initial breakage of rubble skeleton is found to dominate overall rubble strength in punch tests. Scaling of ice rubble is touched upon and a summary of scaled rubble properties is presented. The average c/t value was found to be around 20 kPa/m derived both from the laboratory and the in-situ tests. Unreasonably high values of φ (above 50°) seem to come from analyses where cohesive component of rubble strength was neglected when deriving the material properties.